To this it may be added, that the goodness of God, and the care of his providence, with respect to this church, farther evinces this truth; for if he gave them ground to conclude that _he would be with them always, even to the end of the world_, Matth. xxviii. 20. surely this argues, that he would preserve the rule he had given them to walk by, from all the injuries of time, so that it should not be lost to the end of the world. Again, the Jews were the keepers of the oracles of God, Rom. iii. 2. now they are not reproved by our Saviour, or the apostle Paul, for any unfaithfulness in not preserving them entire; and certainly our Saviour, when he reproves them for making void the law by their traditions, and threatens those that should add to or take from it, if he had found them faulty, in not having faithfully preserved all the scriptures committed to them, he would have severely reproved them for this great breach of trust. _Object._ It is objected against the scriptures being a perfect rule of faith, that they are in several places corrupted, _viz._ that the Old Testament was so by the Jews, out of malice against our Saviour, and the Christian religion, that they might conceal, or pervert to another sense, some prophecies relating to the Messiah, and the gospel-state. And as for the New Testament, they pretend that it was corrupted by some heretics, in defence of their perverse doctrines. _Answ._ 1. As to the Old Testament, it is very improbable and unreasonable to suppose that it was corrupted by the Jews. For, (1.) Before our Saviour’s time, no valuable end could be answered thereby; for then they expected the Messiah to come, according to what was foretold by the prophets, and understood their predictions in a true sense. (2.) After he was come, and Christianity took place in the world, though malice might have prompted them to it, yet they would not do it, because they had always been trained up in this notion, that it was the vilest crime to add to, take from, or alter it: so that one of their own writers[19] says concerning them, that they would rather die an hundred deaths, than suffer the law to be changed in any instance; yea, they have such a veneration for the law, that if, by any accident, part of it should fall to the ground, they would proclaim a fast as fearing lest, for this, God would destroy the whole world, and reduce it to its first chaos: and can any one think, that, under any pretence whatever, they would designedly corrupt the Old Testament? Yea, they were so far from doing it, that they took the greatest care, even to superstition, to prevent its being corrupted, through inadvertency, and accordingly numbered not only the books and sections, but even the words and letters, that not a single letter might be added to, or taken from it.